Deportation Tales

At EOIR's roundtable discussion at the last month's AILA national conference, they referenced a proposed rule amending the regs to allow for attorneys to enter their appearance on behalf of a respondent for bond proceedings only, without having to worry about being the attorney of record for the length of the respondent's removal proceedings. The federal registry summarizes the proposed rule as " [t]his document proposes to amend the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) regulations relating to the representation of aliens in custody and bond proceedings.  Specifically, this rulemaking proposes to allow a representative before EOIR to enter an appearance in custody and bond proceedings without such appearance constituting an entry of appearance for all of the alien's proceedings before the Immigration Court." The full deal can be found here. Well that's good news! The rule is not official yet.  EOIR is currently formulating a final rule

I've been an attorney long enough to know we all have our own unique styles of, well, everything. For most of my life, I've struggled with black and white thinking.  It's a personality deficiency of mine. There was a time early in my career when I couldn't fathom anyone completing a task that wasn't done "the right way," whatever that means. As I've gained more experience though, I've come to realize that not only do we all do things differently, we also usually have strong reasons for doing things the way we do them.  Different immigration courts or individual IJs sometimes impose their own preferences and we get used to having to meet those demands, firm policies, or any other of a myriad number of reasons can account for what makes us prepare to defend our clients differently.  Overall, I think that's a good thing. At this point in my career, I've come to sincerely enjoy talking to other attorneys about how they prepare their cases.